European Environmental Bureau

ended

In December 2019 the European Commission unveiled an ambitious plan for a European Green Deal, promising a ‘set of deeply transformative policies’ that would be rolled out over the coming years aimed at tackling the major environmental crises facing Europe and the world. The EEB, as Europe’s largest network of environmental citizens’ organisations, made it a central priority in 2020 and 2021 to ensure that the EGD’s ambitious vision was translated into equally ambitious concrete policies as the roadmap was rolled out. The context was complicated by the COVID-19 pandemic that struck Europe just three months after the EGD was launched, but the ensuing economic crisis and recognised need for a major injection of public funding also created an opportunity to push for a green recovery. In 2022-2024, the EEB will continue to seek an ambitious rollout of the EGD and a green recovery across a broad range of policy fields. Technical work in specific policy areas aimed at achieving much needed incremental change (e.g. through tightening emission standards) will be complemented by more visionary work on bigger changes that are needed in society in order for us to ‘live well, within planetary boundaries’ in the words of the 7EAP, such as tackling over-consumption and moving ‘beyond GDP’. Addressing the social justice dimension will also be a key aspect of our work. While the EU can and must be at the cutting edge in establishing progressive environmental policies, success in tackling global environmental problems cannot be achieved by EU domestic policies alone. The EEB will therefore continue to engage at regional and global level and to support more ambitious policies in neighbourhood countries. Finally, we plan to further strengthen our organisational base in 2022-2024 by continuing to expand and consolidate our membership, further diversifying our funding sources, upgrading our communications tools and completing the overhaul of our financial and project management systems.